“A loyal servant cannot have more than one master”

“A loyal servant cannot have more than one master” is the principle Zhang Ren uses to explain why he will not submit to Xuande after being captured. The phrase makes loyalty a binding choice rather than a convenience: although surrender could spare his life, Zhang Ren insists that serving another ruler would betray his first obligation. His execution and the poem commemorating him turn that refusal into an enduring image of honor, even as the wider story repeatedly contests which ruler is entitled to command such fidelity.

The phrase at Luocheng

After Kong Ming draws Zhang Ren out of Luocheng and captures him, Zhang Ren is brought before Xuande. Xuande asks why he continued to resist when everyone else had surrendered. Zhang Ren answers that a loyal servant cannot have more than one master. His reply frames the military situation as an ethical decision: the issue is not simply whether resistance has become futile, but whether survival through submission can be reconciled with loyalty.

Xuande points to the reality of the times, observing that submission means Zhang Ren can live. Zhang Ren does not deny the possibility of appearing to submit; instead, he says he might pretend to yield only to strike back later and asks Xuande to kill him. This is not a negotiated surrender or a change of allegiance. Zhang Ren presents continued resistance as the only honest course available to him, and Xuande cannot persuade him to soften his position.

Refusal and its consequence

Zhang Ren is executed. The sequence connects the expression directly to a consequential choice: he refuses to preserve his life by entering another ruler’s service, and his refusal leaves Xuande no softened or provisional submission to accept. The scene thus gives the principle a stark practical cost. Loyalty is praised, but here its performance ends in death rather than political reward or reconciliation.

The episode also places Zhang Ren’s position within a rapidly changing contest for territory. Many others have surrendered, and Xuande’s forces are taking Luocheng; Zhang Ren’s insistence on fidelity distinguishes him from those who accept the new balance of power. His stance does not prevent the city’s capture, but it makes his personal allegiance legible at precisely the moment when control of the city is changing hands.

The poem and the lasting image

After the execution, a poem declares, “An authentic man can’t serve two masters; / Through his loyalty, his death was like no death at all.” It then compares his honor to the heavenly moon, whose light reaches the whole city of Luocheng. The poem does more than repeat the principle: it recasts the loss of Zhang Ren’s life as the survival of his reputation. The city that Xuande’s army has entered becomes the place illuminated by the memory of the man who refused to submit.

That poetic response turns a brief exchange before Xuande into an ethical commemoration. The expression first appears as Zhang Ren’s own explanation, then returns in verse as a general judgment on his conduct. Its force comes from that movement from personal refusal to public remembrance: the choice brings about his death, while the poem preserves his loyalty as a model.

Loyalty amid contested rule

The phrase resonates with the larger story’s concern with allegiance during the collapse of the Han and the emergence of competing kingdoms. The account identifies Liu Bei, Cao Cao, and Sun Quan as leaders who each carve out a kingdom from the failing Han order. Political authority is therefore divided, and loyalty to a particular ruler cannot be separated from disputes over which claim deserves recognition.

That tension appears in Kong Ming’s counsel to Xuande. He describes Cao Cao as holding the emperor and winning the allegiance of many nobles, advises Xuande to regard Sun Quan as a potential ally, and identifies Jingzhou as the place where the future will be decided. Later, after Xuande’s forces have secured territory and brought peace to the region, Kong Ming urges him to accept the imperial title, arguing that Cao Cao has usurped the true ruler and that Xuande should answer the will of Heaven and the people. In these moments, loyalty is connected not only to personal service but also to the contested legitimacy of the ruler being served.

The account of Han’s abdication to Cao Pi gives the principle a further political contrast. The abdication announcement claims that Heaven’s signs and the people’s hearts show that the Han era has ended and fortune has passed to the Cao family; it invokes the example of Yao’s abdication to support the transfer. In Chengdu, Kong Ming responds to Wei’s founding by proposing that Xuande continue the Han lineage as emperor. Together these competing arguments show why Zhang Ren’s refusal carries weight beyond one battlefield: in a world where rulers make rival claims to rightful authority, the question of whom a loyal servant may serve is inseparable from the question of which regime is legitimate.

The expression’s meaning remains clearest in the limits of what Zhang Ren will accept. He will not treat a false submission as a way to survive, and the poem honors that consistency even though it cannot reverse the military outcome. The episode makes loyalty both costly and memorable: Luocheng changes hands, but Zhang Ren’s refusal is preserved as an image of fidelity that outlasts the moment of defeat.